Photographing birds in Cuba with Nikon 1

While on vacation I always enjoy wandering around the resort with my camera and capturing a variety of images.

During our recent, return visit to the Rafael Freyre area of Cuba I had the opportunity to capture a number of images of birds in the marsh area that is adjacent to the resort, as well as on the resort property itself.

While we experienced a week of perfect, cloudless skies for our vacation it had rained quite heavily for a number of days before our arrival. This resulted in the water level in the marsh area being much deeper than it was last year and there were far fewer birds in the area, notably egrets.

I had to rely on my Nikon 1 V2 and 1 Nikon CX 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 to deliver results when sporadic opportunities for bird images presented themselves.

This was especially true with birds-in-flight images. I often had to watch an individual bird for some time and be prepared to fire of an AF-C burst as it left its perk.

I found the AF-C with subject tracking on my Nikon 1 V2 worked very well and I was able to capture images even in situations where the background was quite busy.

I shot most of the time in Manual mode at 15 fps with subject tracking and Auto-ISO.

My Nikon 1 V2 was able to acquire and hold focus for some fairly long bursts, some in excess of 20 images.

The reach of the Nikon 1 CX 70-300 certainly came in handy as most of the small access paths to the marsh bank were far too wet to use and I had to do most of my shooting from the causeway that crosses the marsh.

I spent some time trying to capture images of birds fishing and I had some success. The striking motion of the blue herons was so fast that I wasn’t able to get an image of their heads in motion, but did get a few good ‘splash’ photos…

along with some images of blue herons with their catch.

The green herons were particularly challenging to find but I did manage to capture a few decent images.

I found that there were very few egrets around the area during the day and towards the end of our stay a few could be seen returning to the marsh area in late afternoon. Unfortunately this meant that the birds were flying with back lighting.

The reach of my 1 Nikon 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 allowed me to get a variety of decent images of individual birds.

I’ve owned and shot with both Nikon DX and FX gear in the past and I must admit that I love using my Nikon 1 CX gear for this type of photography because of its portability, lightweight, responsiveness and reach.

Article and all images Copyright Thomas Stirr. No use, duplication of replication of any kind is allowed without written permission. Nikon Rumors is an approved user.

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